On February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin announced an invasion of Ukraine that PBS described as launched from the north, east and south. Within days Russian forces had pushed as far toward the capital as they would ever get. By March 5 that advance had peaked. By April 2, Ukrainian troops had cleared Russian forces from the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions.
The attack was not the start of the conflict. The record shows it grew out of a crisis that began in late 2013.
Before the invasion
President Viktor Yanukovych turned down a European Union integration agreement in late 2013. Violent crackdowns on the protests that followed ended with his flight in February 2014. That same month Russian forces took Crimea, which Moscow said it was protecting for “Russian citizens and Russian speakers.” After a disputed referendum, Russia annexed the peninsula.
In May 2014, pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk held their own referendums, and fighting broke out with Ukrainian units. Russia denied direct involvement. Ukraine and NATO said they had documented “Russian troops and equipment near Donetsk and Russian cross-border shelling.”
The Council on Foreign Relations reports that U.S. intelligence saw Russian troop buildups near Ukraine from October 2021. In December, Moscow demanded that NATO stop operating in Eastern Europe and rule out Ukrainian membership. Washington and the alliance refused. Putin said the 2022 operation aimed to “demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.” Of 193 UN member states, 141 demanded a Russian withdrawal.
The first year
The Russian withdrawal around Kyiv left evidence of apparent war crimes, including summary executions and torture, according to the Council. By May, Russia held Mariupol. Fighting near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility kept raising fears of a disaster.
Ukraine struck back in September 2022. Its troops retook ground in the Kharkiv region and cut supply lines at Lyman. By November they had recaptured Kherson, and Russia pulled out of everything west of the Dnipro River. On September 30, Moscow declared control over Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, though it did not fully occupy any of the four.
Bakhmut and the stalemate
Al Jazeera called Bakhmut the longest and bloodiest battle of the invasion. Wagner fighters began their assault in October 2022. In March 2023 Kyiv chose to reinforce the city, arguing that the fight was wearing down Russia’s elite units. On May 20, 2023, Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin announced that his men had “completed the capture of Bakhmut.” Ukraine replied that its troops still held the southwestern part. U.S. estimates put Russian casualties around the city at “one hundred thousand.”
Ukraine began a second counteroffensive on June 6, 2023. It met minefields and stiff resistance, and PBS says the front barely moved by fall. Russia took Avdiivka in February 2024. In August 2024 it opened a new push in Kharkiv, and Ukraine answered on August 6 with a cross-border strike into Russia’s Kursk region.
Talks in 2025
Negotiations resumed in 2025 under Donald Trump’s mediation. Several rounds ended without a ceasefire. PBS reports that by August 2025 Putin and Trump had met in Alaska, the first Russia-U.S. summit in four years, and that settlement talk centered on the parts of Donetsk still under Ukrainian control. Russia, meanwhile, claimed full control of Luhansk and the city of Chasiv Yar and kept pressing toward Pokrovsk.
The Council describes the central dispute as territorial concessions and security guarantees for Ukraine.
Sources
- Council on Foreign Relations: War in Ukraine (Global Conflict Tracker)
- PBS NewsHour: A timeline of territorial shifts during Russia's war on Ukraine
- Al Jazeera: The battle for Ukraine's Bakhmut: A timeline
